Dear Editor,

There is a multiplicity of well-educated, adroit administrators and Ministry of Education, Youth & Information (MOEY) specialists in the Jamaican education system who are well compensated for doing what they do best, to say the least, but the system continues to grapple with failure. That is a hard nut to crack, because the standard belief is that the more masters and PhDs one acquires, the more educated and competent one might appear to be.

You cannot have professionals leading and interacting with and advising teachers on what to do when they are incapable of constructing a proper sentence in either Jameikan (Patwa) or standard Jamaican English (SJE), for example, and articulating said sentence accurately. There is no doubt that there are many who are experts in their fields who deliver maximum performance, but there are too many whose cognitive capacities are inexplicably unable to stand the test of time.

The summer programme, themed Recover Smarter, being implemented by the MOEY is a great surprise to many educators, who appear to be confused about its objectives; so, too, are those who have generated and are administering said objectives. This speaks volumes to the level of incompetency being emitted within the ambit of academia, from stakeholders to administrators, which is haplessly devouring the minute standards left in the education system to address the crisis at hand.

All this intervention for students when teachers, per chance, need it more. Imagine a teacher of English language who does not know how to differentiate the subject from the predicate, or how to align a subject with its verb. And dare we mention a mathematics teacher who regularly tells his or her students to “go do research” on trigonometry, for example, because he or she does not have the time to reteach “that”. Students are going to school confused, demotivated, ill-informed, and leaving distorted because of teachers’ incompetence and the ineffective practices employed in the teaching and learning process. I blame everyone for teachers being uninspired because we all play a role. It is hard to say that it is the teachers’ responsibility to stay motivated and inspired to do what they are hardly being paid to do.

As a student in high school I encountered teachers who I thought were just doing their jobs when they often said to us, nonchalantly, “Mi a get my pay at di end of di month, so you can stay deh.” Now a teacher myself, I realise that they were just frustrated by their inability to effect the changes needed.

The unfortunate truth is that there is room for significant improvement in our education system, and until steps are taken to rectify the myriad issues impacting all stakeholders we will have “blind leading blind”. I will hasten to commend, however, all the hard-working and enthusiastic teachers in the classroom who continue to be dedicated to the task, ensuring that the educational goals are met and students are maximising their potential.

We need to get it right.

Jovaine Reid

jovainereid@gmail.com